Maybe GOP is too ‘hinged’

Until Saturday evening, members of the media and Democrats (and some establishment Republican elites) held up President Donald Trump as the living embodiment of a person who has become unhinged. That was before an obscure, marginally talented and vile so-called comedian named Michelle Wolf was invited by the White House Correspondents Association to spew one-liners during its annual gala. Wolf took “unhinged” to new extremes, and, in doing so, exposed how unhinged, dare we say deranged, our left wing mainstream media remains since the unthinkable happened last November 2016. Wolf exposed them because she had them laughing uproariously at her mean spirited monologue.

Trump arguably is more unfiltered or uncensored (by Washington standards) than unhinged, but he continues to irritate even some members of the media who retain a few threads of credibility. Columnist Peggy Noonan, to name one. In her weekly Wall Street Journal column April 27, Noonan railed against Trump’s “latest unhingement” during last week’s call-in to the Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends” morning show. She took issue with Trump ranting about James Comey, the FBI, the vicious take down of his nominee to head the Veterans’ Administration, the “crazy Stormy Daniels deal”, and fake news.

Presidents traditionally have not spouted off. Everything was scripted and focus group tested before it was uttered. But consider the contrast between a wide ranging Trump rant, such as the one Noonan scolded about, and a well-crafted Barack Obama, fully hinged speech.

Trump: James Comey is “liar and a leaker”. Unhinged again. And true by all accounts.

Obama: “If you like your healthcare plan, you will be able to keep your healthcare plan. If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor.” Not unhinged. Completely untrue.

There are numerous additional examples. The point is that when Trump goes off script he nearly always does so to further expose hypocrisy, media deceit and corrupt Washington insiders. And now there is new polling strongly suggesting that tightly hinged Republican lawmakers will be the reason Democrats could win back Congressional seats in the 2018 mid-terms. Writing for Townhall.com, Timothy Daughtry reports:

“A new poll of 1,000 likely voters by McLaughlin and Associates … (indicates) that the ‘Blue Wave’ so hoped for by the liberal media is not at all inevitable and that there is still a possible path to Republican victory in November. (The bad news in the polling results is) Republican voters are wanting results, and many in the GOP base see Republican leadership as supporting the swamp they were sent to Washington to drain.

There are but a few nuggets of encouraging data in the McLaughlin poll for DC Republicans, one being that “the generic ballot for Congress in the November election is essentially tied at 44% for Democrats and 43% for Republicans.”

Other poll results:

Among Democrats, 65% trust their party to do what it says it will do. By contrast, only 15% of Republicans trust their own party to carry out its promises, and that dismal percentage drops to 9% among the conservative base.

Overall, 46% of voters polled say the Republican leadership is “supporting the swamp that President Trump promised to drain.”

Trump’s job approval rating of 45% (in this poll) is higher than the job approval of the GOP Congress. Overall, 84% of Republicans and 73% of conservatives approve of Trump’s performance.

Different polls reveal different trends. The McLaughlin poll “dispels the … narrative that President Trump is a drain on the ticket.” But another poll released April 30, by Reuters/Ipsos, finds that a generally negative view of Trump among millennials does not predispose them to lean heavily in favor of Democrat lawmakers.

“The online survey of more than 16,000 registered voters ages 18 to 34 shows their support for Democrats over Republicans for Congress slipped by about 9 percentage points over the past two years, to 46 percent overall. And they increasingly say the Republican Party is a better steward of the economy.”

The report did not find a surge of millennials who’ve shifted to “overt support of Republicans (at 28% it’s about the same as a similar poll two years ago). Yet, heading into the 2018 mid-terms, these millennials also say “they were undecided, would support a third-party candidate or not vote at all.”

Polls ebb and flow, but almost all point to hapless Washington lawmakers in both parties who fail again and again to get out of their own ways, and thereby continue to sacrifice trust and voter approval. Meanwhile, Trump soldiers on despite the black cloud of the Mueller investigation and daily media attempts to diminish his administration.

But nothing can diminish the successful nomination of Supreme Court Judge Neil Gorsuch, the defanging of the Obamacare mandate, restored relations with Israel, historic tax cuts and reforms that are changing American citizen’s lives and lifting their optimism, the hope of fairer trade with China, and, suddenly, the prospect of a denuked North Korea and a unified Korean Peninsula.